The Odd Couple
by lemnlime7
Summary: On the same night Cloud has his date at the Gold Saucer, Cid gets a certain...perky visitor. Yuffie just wants to have a good time, whereas Cid...just wants to be Cid.


"Hey! Old guy! Wake up, already!"

Cid jolts upright in his bed, startled out of his dreams of big-breasted women serving him tea while throttling his "joystick" aboard one of his vintage planes. "This'd better be good," he mumbles while stifling a yawn. The pilot rubs his eyes as he meanders to the door of his room at the Gold Saucer's haunted-house themed hotel. As soon as he spies the smiling teenaged ninja standing at the threshold, both hands proudly placed on hips, he immediately greets her by...slamming the door in her face.

"Hey! What gives?!" Yuffie shouts in confusion, pounding furiously on the door. "Open up!"

Cid returns to his bed and waits for her to give up and go away...but five minutes later finds her still beating away at the door, no doubt making a scene and causing others to think she's some kind of jilted lover. He rushes to the door in anger and jerks it wide open. "What the #$%# you want, girly? They run outta apple juice in the minibar?"

"Hmph! Hearing aid give out on you, old man?" she retorts. "I forgot how early you old fogies go to bed. It's only 11:30, y'know!"

"Yeah, well, some of us got real 9-to-5 jobs, missy!"

Yuffie crosses her arms and starts tapping a foot. "Hmph—you're making it really hard for me to ask you this, y'know!"

"Ask me what?"

Yuffie holds her arms behind her back and leans toward him with a smirk. "On a D-A-T-E!" she answers cutely.

After a long pause, Cid replies with his usual level of tact and eloquence. "Aw, hell naw! I ain't goin' out nowhere with no jail bait like you!"

Yuffie inwardly wonders just how many negatives were in that sentence and if all those negatives in fact canceled each other out. Of course, consent to take what she wanted had never been an issue to the mighty Yuffie before. After all, as a self-dubbed "master thief," she's inclined to take what she wants, when she wants it. So, following a series of silly hand gestures, she and Cid are suddenly at the entrance to the Event Square, all thanks to the magic of ninjutsu.

Cid looks around in astonishment. "What in the sam hill's goin' on here? Did I just get drugged?!" he demands.

"Congratulations to the lucky 1000th couple to pass through these doors tonight!" shouts an exuberant but pimply usher to Cid's right. "You will have the opportunity to play the lead roles in our improv play this evening!" The well-dressed man places a flowery lei around the odd couple's necks.

Cid, still stunned by the abruptness of the scene change, yells a protest. "Whoa, there, compadre! The only one I wanna get 'lei-ed' by is a busty chick in a bikini, and you most definitely ain't it, so back up, will ya?"

The usher is shocked into stillness by Cid's outburst. Yuffie breaks up the awkward moment by turning Cid back toward the entrance and pushing him into the lobby. "So sorry about this," she says over her shoulder. "Grandpa gets a little senile sometimes. You know how it is..." she offers as way of explanation.

Cid throws a fist into the air in indignation. "Who the #$%# are you callin' senile, ya little whippersnapper?!" he yells.

Yuffie rolls her eyes. "People who use the word 'whippersnapper' are approximately 800% more likely to be senile," she mumbles.

" _What_ was that?"

In an effort to divert his attention, she suddenly points to something behind him. "Ohmigosh, is that Mickey Mouse?!"

"W-Where?!" Cid frantically throws his cigarette to the ground and snuffs it out with his boot in a hurry. "Can't let the Disney guys see me smokin' or I'll lose my KH gig!" he frets...until he looks around to see a total absence of mouse ears in _this_ theme park. Realizing that his leg's been pulled only serves to enrage him further.

"How about a ride on the gondola? My treat!" Yuffie offers enthusiastically. She locks her arm in his and bounces up and down with seemingly limitless energy.

"Aw, hell naw! Shit like that's too damn—" he starts, but before he can finish his sentence, Yuffie once again makes some silly hand gestures, tapping into her inner Naruto to instantly spirit them away to the gondola. She immediately proceeds to shove Cid aboard before locking the door securely behind them.

Cid struggles desperately to get the infernal lock open but the gondola starts to take off before he can figure out how the damn thing works. "Agh! Stupid safety locks!" he mutters in frustration as he helplessly watches the station slowly fade into the distance.

He grudgingly turns away from the window and glares at the hellion responsible for trapping him in this blatant romantic-tension-building plot device. Oh, he'd be damned if he let this little ploy work on him. No sirree! Just because those fireworks look so beautiful against the night sky...and the music playing in the background is so incredibly soothing...and Yuffie's eyes are sparkling just so every time a firework bursts...and— _no, no, no, what the $# &% is wrong with you, Highwind?!_

Oh, he knows _exactly_ what's happening to him now. He's being—* _shudder*_ —overcome...by _the feels!_ He recognizes this situation from the sappy chick flicks Shera sometimes forces him to watch—this is a pointless interlude to the plot where the sole purpose is for two characters to—* _gulp_ *—fall for each other...and the only way to get out of said situation is by—* _blech*_ —kissing each other!

 _Aw, hell naw!_

Yuffie is giving him that ultimate weapon that every woman _everywhere_ innately possesses—doe eyes! She's obviously expecting Cid to fulfill the obligatory chick flick cliché.

"Listen, Yuffs," he starts, pulling a cigarette from the pack in his back pocket and lighting up. "You're plum nuts if ya really think of me as somebody who'd be interested in you in...that kinda way. Hate to break it to ya, but you just ain't my type."

Yuffie noticeably deflates at hearing this.

He continues. "I smoke a pack a day, I don't shave or bathe much, I got an attitude like a mother%$# %# and I got needs that a scrawny twig like you couldn't possibly fulfill. So run along back to your daycare or whatever you came from and leave us grown-ups be, ya got it?"

Yuffie pauses at length before emitting a heavy sigh of defeat. "All right, old-timer. Have it your way."

The gondola pulls back into the station and Yuffie exits first, but not before turning back to the stubbly pilot and adding with a grin, "Oh, by the way..." She rummages into her back pocket and holds up a photo-booth-style vertical sheet containing images of Vincent and Cid smiling and posing in goofy ways next to each other. "...you guys make a cute couple."

Cid stares after her in stunned silence before he eventually manages to recollect his thoughts. "Hey! Where the hell'd you get that? Hey! Come back 'ere, you little...!"

He chases after the wily ninja in a futile attempt to recover the secret photos she'd stolen from his personal effects. Not like they'd ever give her inspiration to write a fanfic about the two of them or anything...


End file.
